iPhone sales may be dropping, but people are paying more money for the devices

According to a note sent on Monday by the UBS analysts Timothy Arcuri and Munjal Shah, Apple is successfully persuading people to move up the iPhone price scale.

They cited a survey from the consumer-intelligence firm CIRP, which showed that 26% of Apple consumers paid more than $900 for an iPhone from April to June. That was up from 5% a year ago and up from 24% in March. CIRP surveyed 500 Apple consumers from April to June.

It's important to point out that the iPhone X was released only in November, which is why Apple didn't see many people spending more than $900 on an iPhone this time last year.

Still, the figures show that a significant proportion of Apple fans are now prepared to cross the $900 barrier when it comes to new iPhones.

"Some have argued iPhone X pricing has hurt unit growth, but we believe Apple has been successful with its pricing strategy and has moved customers up the price curve," Arcuri and Shah wrote.

The two predicted that Apple would charge even more for the follow-up "iPhone X+" this year, contradicting another popular theory that Apple would reduce the iPhone X's price and launch its successor at the same introductory price of $999.

Apple, by this logic, is slowly making people more comfortable with pricier phones. That's great news for profit. According to TechInsights, Apple makes much more money from the iPhone X than it does from the iPhone 8.

The iPhone X, by this analysis, costs $357.50 to make and sells for $999, giving it a gross margin of 64%. The iPhone 8 sells for $699 and has a gross margin of 59%.

"We think Apple's pricing strategy has worked better than most investors believe," UBS wrote. "A moderate mix-down is evident, but Apple successfully moved most premium customers in the $700-900 price range to price bands over $1,000."

UBS included a chart with an even blunter title: "Milking the big buck Apple fans while bringing more in the ecosystem."